Morning Bulletin – Friday, April 3, 2009

A roundup of news, schedules, and key stories from CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris:

President Obama gears up for the NATO summit in France after a whirlwind couple of days in London for the G-20 Summit.

The latest:

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

**Earlier, at a news conference upon his arrival in France, the president said about the impending North Korea missile launch, "Should North Korea decide to take this action, we will work with all interested partners in the international community to take appropriate steps to let North Korea know that they cannot threaten the safety and stability of other countries with impunity. ...The response so far from the North Koreans has been not just unhelpful but has resorted to the sort of language that has led to North Korea's international isolation in the international community for a very long time"

**Sarkozy announced at the newser that President Obama will be returning to France in June; he'll visit Normandy for the 65th anniversary of D-Day.

Previewing the NATO summit, the New York Times' Thom Shanker and Steven Erlanger report, "NATO leaders ... must face the harsh reality that NATO's first military mission outside Europe is failing in a way that risks fracturing the alliance. As President Obama takes ownership of the fight against Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies, aides say he is determined to turn around the war in Afghanistan with a regional approach, recognizing that the stability of neighboring Pakistan, where Al Qaeda hides, is increasingly at risk. Mr. Obama is trying to fashion an efficient counterinsurgency strategy, as in Iraq, with a comprehensive surge of military and civilian reinforcements. But his increasing American troops in Afghanistan to some 68,000 by the end of the year, from 38,000 today, is also likely to significantly Americanize an operation that in recent years had been divided equally between American troops and allied forces. By year's end, American troops will outnumber allied forces by at least two to one. His NATO allies are giving the president considerable vocal support for the newly integrated strategy. But they are giving him very few new troops on the ground, underlining the fundamental strains in the alliance. The allies will offer more funds but no more than several thousand new personnel members, according to alliance military planners. Many of those will not be soldiers, but police trainers to meet a central pillar of the president's new Afghan strategy, which focuses on an expansion of Afghan security forces. But even for the small numbers of European combat reinforcements, check the fine print: Nearly all will be sent to provide security for Afghanistan's elections this summer, and will not be permanently deployed."

(CBS)

PRESIDENT'S SCHEDULE: Following the town meeting, Mr. Obama will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at 9:45am ET in Baden-Baden, Germany. Later, he'll head to Kurhaus for NATO-related events before spending the night back in Strasbourg.

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

G-20: The reviews are in... In his debut on the international stage, President Obama presented himself as the leader of an America that can no longer go it alone, and as abiding by the protocol of a global new deal," writes the New York Times' Helene Cooper. "It was a performance that ranged from mediating behind closed doors — Mr. Obama personally intervened in a spat between the French and Chinese leaders — to a carefully calculated news conference in which he reached deep into history, showed contrition for the failings of Wall Street, and forecast a road the world could no longer travel. Gone are the days, from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana, when Britain and the United States made the rules that others followed. ... After more than 11 hours of meetings, Mr. Obama emerged Thursday from his first summit meeting with a handful of modest concrete commitments. He did not get much of what American officials had been hoping for, notably failing to persuade other countries to commit to more fiscal stimulus spending. But he, along with the other world leaders present, did get a more forceful and detailed blueprint for a global recovery than a similar gathering 86 years ago, when an earlier generation failed to take collective action to counter the Great Depression. 'By being willing to accommodate European leaders on the need for better regulation of financial markets and emerging market leaders on their desire to have less protectionism,' said Eswar S. Prasad, a former China division chief at the International Monetary Fund, Mr. Obama "has certainly guided the G-20 leaders to a positive outcome.' 'All in all, not a bad day's work,' Mr. Prasad added. Mr. Obama's own assessment? 'Well, I think I did O.K.,' he said, when asked by a reporter during a news conference to rate his performance."

(AP/News Team International/pool)

The group made no commitment to a specific stimulus target that the U.S. supported. Instead, the leaders made a vague commitment to 'deliver the scale of sustained fiscal effort necessary to restore growth' and said the world was in the middle of a giant monetary and fiscal stimulus valued at $5 trillion. Nonetheless, by Thursday night, the erstwhile factions -- Messrs. Obama and Brown as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- painted a picture of progress and bridged their differences. 'This is the day that the world came together, to fight back against the global recession. Not with words but a plan for global recovery and for reform and with a clear timetable,' Mr. Brown said."

"Just over two months into his presidency, Barack Obama commanded center stage at this high-wattage gathering of the world's industrialized nations, vacuuming up attention both inside the summit and throughout a sophisticated city not easily star-struck," writes Politico's Jonathan Martin. "Obama proclaimed at the end of the conference that his country would be more humble in the world, but there was nothing modest about the attention he received. His profile was so immense that it threatened to diminish both the global summit itself and the protests taking place on the streets of London. ... As always wanting to seize control of Obama's public image, the president's aides took steps to ensure that he was seen as not just as a celebrity astride a gushing audience but a statesman taking a leadership role during his debut on the world stage. A press briefing for White House reporters was hastily called Thursday afternoon just minutes after the summit's communiqué was issued so a senior administration official could tout the president's pivotal role in brokering a compromise between the French and Chinese on tax havens that the official said had threatened to derail the meeting. ... Obama, mindful of his outsized role, was modest about how he fared here, saying at the press conference at the end of the summit that he thought "we did OK" and noting he wanted to listen and learn at what was his first international conference. The final agreement stopped short of Obama's hopes that individual European nations would do their own economic stimulus at home, as Obama did here in the United States."

"Ever since Air Force One touched down at Stansted, Barack Obama has been patting people on the back. Not only is he the most tactile US president of recent times - even more so than touchy-feely George Bush - he was the biggest slapper at the G20 summit," writes the Guardian's Peter Collett. "You can't help feeling that it's because he wants to be seen as friendly and approachable. But if you look closely, you'll notice that Obama's touches are invariably one-sided - he touches the other heads of state, but they don't touch him. This asymmetry provides a clue to the underlying purpose of Obama's tactile gestures. Although he probably doesn't realise it, Obama is engaging in 'power touch'. He's exercising his right as the most important person present to touch and not be touched - it is his way of surreptitiously reminding everyone that he's the guy really in charge. The fascinating thing is that nobody is offended. Everyone thinks he's being friendly."

4912056BUDGET: "The House and Senate approved competing $3.5 trillion Democratic budget plans Thursday night, each tracking the priorities of President Barack Obama but also falling short of the bold mandate he could need to move his ambitious agenda through Congress," reports Politico's David Rogers. "No Republican in either chamber backed the president, but the 233-196 House vote surpassed the size of budget victories for either party over the last decade. And Democrats lost only two of their members on the 55-43 vote in the Senate [20 House Democrats voted against it]. ... The House remains closer to Obama's agenda, especially in the case of healthcare reform. The Senate resolution is an almost status-quo document when compared with the tax and spending outline the president put forward in February. Adopted shortly before midnight, the Senate plan calls for large, unspecified cuts of $221 billion from Obama's requests for non-defense appropriations over the next five years. Unlike the House, no deadline is set for committee action on healthcare reform. And down to the wire, senators fought a see-saw battle over estate-tax relief even as Democrats never made a firm commitment to the president's signature 'Making Work Pay' tax break targeted to working class families. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is hopeful that the House-Senate negotiators will now produce a final budget soon after Congress returns from its spring recess on April 20. And the administration is betting that the final resolution will give Obama a clear shot at winning health care legislation this year — under budget procedures that free him from the threat of Senate filibusters."

"The measures now move to a conference committee where negotiators must resolve differences between the two chambers, a prelude to the more difficult choices that will be required to implement Obama's initiatives. While Democrats back the president's vision for transforming huge sectors of the economy, they remain fiercely divided over the details," adds the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery. "There is no agreement, for example, on how to pay for an overhaul of the health-care system expected to add more than $1 trillion to the budget over the next decade, nor is there consensus on how to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars the government stands to collect by setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions and forcing industry to buy permits to pollute. Those issues will be decided in committees where lawmakers have begun the torturous work on the specifics of Obama's broad plans."

"Along with the $787 billion stimulus enacted in February, the approval of the 2010 budget by both chambers is a substantial boost to the president's agenda," write the Wall Street Journal's Naftali Bendavid and Greg Hitt. "Both House and Senate trimmed the budget submitted by Mr. Obama, who proposed increasing spending on basic domestic government by just over 10%. The House version would increase such spending by 9.5% and the Senate by 7%. The congressional budgets also eliminate the president's request for $250 billion for further bank bailouts. They extend Bush-era tax cuts on the middle class, but not the wealthy."

(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

ALSO TODAY: Vice President Joe Biden addresses Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network in New York City today at 2pm.

FOREIGN POLICY
NY Times' Mark Landler and David E. Sanger, "World Leaders Pledge $1.1 Trillion for Crisis"

LA Times' Henry Chu and Jim Puzzanghera and Paul Richter, "G-20 summit surprises with a show of unity"

Wall Street Journal's Peter Spiegel, "North Korea Launch Poses Diplomatic Test for U.S."

FINANCIAL INDUSTRY BAILOUT
Washington Post's Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Jeff Gerth, "As Crisis Loomed, Geithner Pressed But Fell Short"

Wall Street Journal's David Wessel, "Paulson Expected Criticism for Changing Course on TARP"

Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath, "Senate May Push for Shake-Up of Regional Fed Banks"

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
The Hill's Sam Youngman and Bob Cusack, "Some Obama promises get punted": "President Obama has let a handful of campaign promises slide in his first 10 weeks in office. Obama's aides insist that the president has adhered to his promises of change even as Republicans and special-interest groups have howled at every deviation from the campaign, perceived or otherwise. ... Even though some congressional Democrats have expressed concern that Obama's agenda has been too ambitious, the White House has put the brakes on high-profile promises that Obama delivered on the campaign trail. Some have been more obvious than others. After vowing to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), Obama in February reassured Canadian leaders that such a move was not high on his priority list, saying he wants 'to be very careful about any signals of protectionism.' ... Obama bent his rules on appointing lobbyists to work in his administration, issuing waivers of his campaign policy for his deputy secretary of Defense and a senior official at the Treasury Department, among others. ... Eleven groups, including the ACLU, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists, sent a letter to the White House this week that suggested Obama was breaking his campaign promises on protecting whistleblower rights. ... Obama promised on his campaign website to close the 'doughnut hole' in the Medicare prescription drug (Part D) program. Democrats have long decried the doughnut hole, which is between the initial coverage limit and when catastrophic coverage kicks in. But plugging the hole — which would cost tens of billions of dollars — was not in Obama's budget plan."

Washington Post's Ceci Connolly, "Sebelius Appears Unhurt by Tax Error"

Politico's Ben Smith, "Inside Obama's polling operation"

Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe, "With 2010 Census Looming, Obama Chooses Survey Expert to Run Bureau"

(CBS)

Chicago Tribune's Rick Pearson and Jeff Coen, "Rod Blagojevich indicted on federal charges"

GOP'S FUTURE
Washington Times' Ralph Z. Hallow, "Steele urged to target stimulus"

Politico's Andy Barr, "Gingrich: GOP-ers may form third party"

NY-20 SPECIAL ELECTION
Albany Times Union's Leigh Hornbeck, "Like tea leaves, absentee ballots hard to read"

The Saratogian's Andrew J. Bernstein, "Tedisco to resign leadership"

FUTURE RACES
IL-5 Special Election (4/7/09): Chicago Tribune's John McCormick, "Mike Quigley assured of victory in 5th District – almost"

2010 CT Senate: The New London Day's Ted Mann, "'Devastating' numbers show Dodd would be defeated if the election were held today"

2010 FL Senate: Ft. Myers News-Press' Eun Kyung Kim, "Mack won't make a run for Senate"

2010 PA Senate: Philadelphia Inquirer's Thomas Fitzgerald, "Specter add attacks Toomey's Wall St. ties"

2012 Presidential: McClatchy Newspapers' James Rosen, "Sanford gives in on stimulus, will seek funds for S.C."

ETC.
Wall Street Journal's Amy Chozick, "Preparing the Presidential Roast"